LonelyPlanetMum
Don't give too much weight to the people they showed on the television. Those people were actively sought out and shown because they would make people gasp.
Click bait mentality, really.
Honestly, I go out canvassing (when I'm well enough!) and those people are not representative.
Generally, people struggling know exactly who is responsible for the pain. Sadly, those in most need often find it hard to vote. We give them the postal vote form - but even that is often a struggle.
If your child has had no school place for 3 years because of cuts to SEND provision, and you are on the 4th floor of a block of flats, you are dealing with so much, 24 hours of the day, even filling in that postal vote and sending it off slips down your list of 'must do', however much you care.
So - don't get cross with the vulnerable.
I worry that this is one of the reasons we were shown these people.
I think you're pretty unlucky with your rellies!
But, you know, as we discussed on here ages ago, there is something about bubbles, networks and locations at play in this awful Brexit business.
People talk about politics with those around them, and construct politics from a mix of abstraction and lived experience.
So, if they are surrounded by Brexit supporters, or crowds of their friends are wimbling in about switching from Labour to Johnson to get Brexit done, they are likely to get swept up in it and do the same.
Heavens, I work in schools, and it's fascinating to watch the most bizarre 'crazes' sweep the playground.
Adults are just the same - but sadly we have crazes about things that are far more serious than those squashy toys, or key-rings.
For balance, I have no close relatives or friends who voted Leave or would vote Conservative. That's just the way with statistics.
And, lastly, if we couldn't persuade people to vote against their direct self-interest, there would be no politics. People would be born into a particular politico-social position and stay there, forever.
But people are persuadable. Altruism and a sense of justice are very strong factors in many people's social make-up.
Sadly, that plays out in all sorts of ways.
We really are up against a very powerful media. It's depressing but true. It's no surprise that many, many people aren't as massively informed as they need to be for this GE.
I've never known a GE like it, where a sophisticated understanding of. Implied issues is actually a necessity for a fully informed vote.
And it's no surprise that many people are going to the polls woefully under-informed.
It's an incredibly unusual situation. We're really not geared up for this. And why should we be? Why should you need GCSE-levels in information in an arcane subject just to put your X in a box? It's never been like that before.
People are voting in Brexit, in a re-writing if our legal-political system (p.48); in their views of the future of a transformed neo-liberal capitalist system in hyper-drive.
It's incredible stuff.
We would need to have set up hedgeRow schools and worker education sessions to produce the mass political literacy required for this.
When you think about it, it's amazing that so many people are informed - have made the huge effort to inform themselves.
So ... have faith and have love.
Give what you can of your heart and abilities - but feed your own fire to keep it burning.
People have fought back from worse.
Women's suffrage was impossible before it happened.
The Tolpuddle martyrs resisted with no guarantee of the future we now inhabit.
Martin Luther King bent reality to give birth to his dream.
Never, ever fail to believe that people can hope for better - and that hope can force reality to a better shape.